Introduction and family background:

 

Mr. P. Mark: It’s real simple. It’s Phillip with two L’s… Mark [is my] last name. So my grandfather actually gave me my name, to make it sound more Canadian…

 

Mr. P. Mark: [My grandfather] came to Canada in 1914, [19]15, [19]16. He’s got a head tax certificate too… I couldn’t find any history of him except for the head tax certificate, [and] on the back of it, the stamps… That was what they used as a passport way back when.

 

Mr. P. Mark: … he went home… and he came back over, because… the law back then was the [Chinese Exclusion Act]. You couldn’t bring your wife or spouse over. You can only be the man and be over here. So he had no choice.

 

How the family came to Riversdale:

 

Mr. P. Mark: We were in [town name to check]. Grandpa had a restaurant there. Nice restaurant. They moved the highway on him, from… the middle of town to the other side of town. So business went away… And then grandpa actually bought… the house I live in now…

 

Mr. P. Mark: Riversdale was a booming Chinatown area when I first got here, which was when I was 6 or 7 years old. I went to Princess Alexandra School at the time, and it was only a half a block away… My dad had a beauty parlor, a hair salon and a barber shop in that building that I live in now.

 

What Riversdale was like back then:

 

Mr. P. Mark: Back then it was quite a vibrant Chinese community, because Avenue C was the main Chinese place. There’s restaurants there, the National, the Golden Dragon, Orient Trading Company, China Doll or China Lamp restaurant. And that was just on Avenue C alone… And then on 20th Street, my dad… was a bit of an entrepreneur. He had an import shop, a restaurant also on there.

 

Mr. P. Mark: But it was a mixed bag, because not only was [it] more Chinese back then, but it was also more European too. We had at least five delis here way back when, meat shops… European meats… We had a Safeway, an OK Economy, a Dominion store. We had a Royal Bank, Bank of Montreal and the Bank of Nova Scotia, all on 20th Street. They’re all gone now. So the… buildings that you’ve been seeing the murals on, that’s basically the Bank of Nova Scotia.

 

Mr. P. Mark: … [it] was a very iconic Chinese restaurant… It was just a huge place. Unbelievable… it was like a whole corridor of restaurants… Lots of cousins, lots of people… all the kids who are my age… I went to school with a lot of them… That was community that way.

 

Growing up working in the restaurants:

 

Mr. P. Mark: … I happen[ed] to work in a lot of the restaurants that were around that area… my aunt worked in the restaurant, and I washed dishes. That was my beginning, working in restaurants… Golden Dragon… I worked as a dishwasher also. Then my grandfather[’s] restaurant on 20th Street… we had dim sum and stuff like that there too.

 

Mr. P. Mark: I went to Chinese school too… only a couple of blocks away… It’s called Past and Present [now]… [it] sells antiques. And that was our Chinese school. So I had to try and learn Cantonese and Mandarin… Typical Chinese school. So you get off school, you go to [Chinese] school. And then when you finish school, you go to wash dishes. Then when you finish washing dishes, you go and do your homework. So pretty much tired out.

 

Kehan: [What did it smell and sound like?]

 

Mr. P. Mark: I grew up in kitchens, right? So the smells are incredible. You didn’t know what you’re going to get, but you know what? [It] smell[ed] good… I can’t cook, though, because all I did was wash dishes and move stuff around… pack orders… or serve. So my aunties… [and] uncles, they all made the food.

 

Mr. P. Mark: … a lot of… my uncles and stuff like that, when they came over, they didn’t want to work [in] restaurants, right? So when they made enough money, they moved out… They want[ed] their children to have a better life, and they all have.

 

On Chinatowns changing:

 

Mr. P. Mark: Well, you know, I go to Victoria a lot, and that Chinatown is slowly, slowly disappearing. Also, I’ve been to New York Chinatown and that’s disappearing also… Because Chinatown[s] originally were a lot of immigrants [who] came over, and they were trying to do a better life for their children… So what happens after that? It just disperses… That’s what’s happened here.

 

Mr. P. Mark: I mean, it’s nice to think of having a Chinatown, but is [it] sustainable? Hard to say… I don’t want to call it decay. I just call it… just a change. That’s what I see.

 

Perception versus reality:

 

Kehan: [We’ve talked a lot about perception versus reality in Riversdale.]

 

Mr. P. Mark: Well, perception. Yeah. If you ask a person… here’s an example. We sell things on Facebook once in a while, and you tell them the address. See ya. They won’t even show up. Just saying the address, because we live in the alphabets… But if I take… the same object and go to a friend’s place on the east side, … you’ll pay twice as much money for it. So that’s the reality.

 

Mr. P. Mark: … I still see the older people, like from Juniper. They come walking down my street all the time. I say hi… No problems.

 

Mr. P. Mark: It’s just everybody’s preconceived notion of what Riversdale is like. They don’t know. They don’t actually know what it’s like… just before Covid, it was booming here. We had 28 different restaurants and coffee shops between Avenue A and Avenue H…

​

On presence and bringing people in:

 

Mr. P. Mark: … you have to bring people in… [The] Riversdale street fairs… used to be 4 or 5 blocks long. Now it’s two blocks long… with the food trucks, it was unbelievable. I just loved it… They tried. It’s successful, but they don’t redo it or do it in a better way.

 

Mr. P. Mark: … you have to have a presence though. There’s no presence right now. Like you say, you have the art gallery here. It’s great. But [on the] street, it’s not there…

 

Mr. P. Mark: … I can walk down the street any time. [It] doesn’t bother me.

 

On grandmas:

 

Kehan: [A little bit more about grandmas…]

 

Mr. P. Mark: … my grandma was the dragon lady. She ruled… Grandpa, nicest guy in the world… And she raised me. So I listened to everything she said. I ate what she made me. I went to school. I did my homework, because she was the boss. And she was like, four foot nothing, right?… There’s something about grandmas.

 

Mr. P. Mark: … she would go… we visited a lot… I stood at a lot of couches for a lot of years, because you were the Chinese little boy. They just talk, talk, talk… You just… smile. That’s all you do.

 

Smells and memories:

 

Mr. P. Mark: … restaurants seem to be the meeting points for everybody, right? And the import shops, we all hung out there… And the smells… from an import shop to the restaurants, you can’t find anywhere else, even the new modern Asian grocery stores. It’s not the same… it’s an Asian place, but it’s not really… a Chinese Chinatown one. They don’t smell the same, because I used to unpack all the crates… that came from China… I was like 15 feet in the air, cracking crates, dishes… and then hauling rice.

 

Mr. P. Mark: … grandma used to cook so much stuff… mainly… the stuff that they had when they were younger, when they were still… in China or Hong Kong… salted fish. Salted fish and rice, and a big pot of rice… just salted fish and that steam coming up, or salted pork… because they used to salt everything, because that’s how you preserve stuff… that’s what I miss… Sometimes I’ll go to a restaurant and… I caught the whiff of it… I don’t know what it is. But I know it. I smelled it before.

 

Mr. P. Mark: … I stood in front of the stove making tofu when I was a kid, too… Terribly labour intensive.

 

On staying connected:

 

Mr. P. Mark: Once you lose that connection, it’s hard to get back… If you don’t have family here, it’s tough, because what’s there to bring you back, right? … the building that I live in now, it was my grandfather[’s]… He bought that in the [’]60s. So I have a big connection that way. But not everybody does. Like all my cousins that came over, they all bought houses… here, but then… they moved out.

 

Lion dance at New Year:

 

Mr. P. Mark: … we started off actually around my dad’s place. We did the dragon [dance] and… the lion dance… I was the teaser… and then we’d go to the Freemasons, which is right beside the park… It’s still there. My picture should be still on the wall there… it’s black and white… all the businesses would hang the fruit out there and the money… and the [lion] would take it all in. So that was a big thing back then. It hasn’t happened for years now.

 

Mr. P. Mark: … it’s New Year’s, basically. So it could be February or it could be January, and it’s freaking cold… we had lots of cultural stuff… I had to go to dance class, Chinese dance class.